


I Am Nick Miller's Broken Heart

by DreamsOfSleep



Series: Pepperwood AU [7]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Altered Mental States, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Mental Breakdown, Meta, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-29 21:09:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10144223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: Drabble series spitballing different ideas of Julius Pepperwood as Nick Miller's inner voice. Title is a reference to the movieFight Club.





	1. Toxic (I Wish I Knew How To Quit You)

**Author's Note:**

> Pepperwood as a metaphor for Nick is especially interesting to me in S6 since the writers haven't shown Nick's inner thoughts at all and have left him a completely blank slate. I thought a Nick/Pepperwood dream sequence to get into Nick's state of mind would be fun to write. I was trying to do something with the shed scene referenced in 6x15 "Glue" but what came out is actually quite sad. There definitely was a reason that Jessica Night wasn’t in the current version of Nick's Pepperwood novel. Not sure if I’m going to keep this conversation in the final draft of my larger S6 fix-it fic, but I found the tone of the scene to be interesting. 
> 
> I wish the title didn't get co-opted by _Brokeback Mountain_ memes, but I couldn't think of a better one that fit the scene. Leave a comment if you can think of a better one.

She holds out his lighter and a pack of cigarettes.

He shakes his head at her. “I quit. I’m trying to quit all the things that are bad for me.”

“Am I one of them?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. “I hoped you wouldn’t be.” 


	2. Shot Through The Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from the Bon Jovi song "Shot Through The Heart"

In Nick’s dream, he’s chasing a guy in a trenchcoat. The guy is booking it through the dark rainy streets of downtown LA, zig-zagging through back alleyways. This guy knows the city like the back of his hand but Nick does too. Nick is finally able to catch up to him. He grabs onto the sleeve of his coat, pulling him back. The guy turns around and he’s looking at himself or the Pepperwood version of himself, at least. Someone shot him through the chest but he’s still alive. The redness is spreading across his chest, blood seeping out of that mortal wound all down the front of his shirt, but the guy doesn't seem to care. He fixes Nick with a cold, hard stare.

_“Where’s Jess?” Nick asks him._

_Pepperwood pulls his arm out of Nick's grasp. “She got bitten. I had to leave her behind."_

_Nick feels a surge of anger, hating Pepperwood for not doing his damn job. He's supposed to be the hero. What kind of hero lets that just happen? He gets up in Pepperwood's face. “Why did you let her get bitten? You were supposed to protect her.”_

_Pepperwood shoves him back. “I didn’t. You did. You were supposed to fight for her. Why didn’t you fight for her, Nick?”_

Nick wakes up with a start. His mind is trying to hold onto the edges of that dream but it's already fading out. He's been having this dream for months ever since he went to New Orleans but he always wakes up before he can ask Pepperwood what he means. The dream feels important but he's still unable to see the larger picture. All he has are these disjointed fragments. He's frustrated that he still can't put the pieces together to see what he's missing. All the meaning is lost when he's awake. It's on the outer reaches of his brain somewhere but he can't get to it. He tries to go back to sleep but it's impossible with all the thoughts rushing through his mind. He gets up and tries to write another chapter of Pepperwood to figure it out. 


	3. What Happened to Jessica Night?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Jess was the catalyst for Nick, she had to be the catalyst for Pepperwood too. Getting a little Memento-esque here, but Nick rewriting Pepperwood's backstory to put him in New Orleans actually messed up the timeline in Pepperwood's universe so that Jessica Night never existed. It would be such a mindfuck for Pepperwood if one day he woke up and she wasn’t there. He remembers getting married to her and sharing a whole life with her but then Nick tells him she never actually existed. Nick changed his backstory so he never met her and his entire life became a lie. Pepperwood ends up stuck in the New Orleans purgatory by himself waiting for her.

When Nick opens his eyes he’s looking down the barrel of a gun. He looks past the gun into his own face. _Geez, how much glue did he huff?_ He doesn’t feel high though. He risks looking out of his peripheral vision to the empty side of the bed next to him and remembers that Reagan is out of town. He doesn’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. Maybe she would be able to wake him up if she were still here. This doesn’t feel like a dream though. He can hear the guy breathing so it feels pretty real. It’s probably a good thing that Reagan isn’t here next to him being taken hostage by a figment of his overactive imagination.

“What do you want?” he rasps out. That seems like a good question to ask.

“I’m trying to find my wife.”

“I don’t know your wife. You have the wrong guy.”

The man looks over at a copy of _The Pepperwood Chronicles_ sitting on his desk and back at Nick. He narrows his eyes at him. “Yeah, you do. Where is she, Nick?”

“Nowhere. She doesn’t exist. You never met her.”

For a split second, Nick can see the overwhelming grief in him. He lowers his gun.

Nick sits up and watches as Pepperwood goes over to his desk. He picks up a writing pad and a pen and shoves them into Nick's chest. “Write her back in.”

Nick shakes his head at him. “I can’t. The book’s done.”

Pepperwood takes a book of matches out of his coat and lights one. He tosses it in Nick’s trashcan to start a fire. He takes the copy of _The Pepperwood Chronicles_ off Nick's desk and starts tearing the pages out and throwing them into the flames. Nick can see the pain etched into his face. Nick knows Pepperwood would rip out his own heart to save her. He had taken away Pepperwood's soul. Pepperwood becomes increasingly transparent as he destroys his own life story, sacrificing himself to the flames. “Write her back in, Nick.”

So Nick does. He writes what _The Pepperwood Chronicles_ originally should have been, a love story about a guy named Julius Pepperwood who was lost in the world before he found a woman named Jessica Night, as Pepperwood burns himself up page by page so that she might live.


End file.
